The Front Row: “Daddy Longlegs”

No, the Safdie brothers Josh and Benny, the directors of the crime drama “Good Time,” haven’t robbed banks, but that movie has strong autobiographical elements
nonetheless: they know street-scuffed chaos firsthand, and the
peculiarities of their experience, from their grown-up perspective on
their turbulent childhood, is the subject of their 2009 feature “Daddy
Longlegs” (which I discuss in this clip). It’s the story of two young
boys’ two weeks with their father, who, in the wake of his divorce from
their mother, has custody of them only for that short span, during which
they’re still in school and he’s working as a projectionist. As a
result, the boys’ childhood—a proxy for that of the Safdies—is imbued with movies, and “Daddy Longlegs”
shows that the turmoil of that period was also the awakening of an
artistic sensibility.

The father in the movie is played by Ronald Bronstein, the director of
“Frownland,” which is one of the great modern American films, and
one of the seminal independent films of the century. He co-wrote and
co-edited “Good Time” and the Safdies’ previous movie, “Heaven Knows
What”; Bronstein co-edited “Daddy Longlegs” as well, and it even seems as if he
virtually co-directed parts of it from within the frame. He’s one of the
great creators of modern cinema, and—though it would be optimal if
he were also continuing to direct movies himself—it’s a mark of the
Safdies’ originality to make him a part of their cinemasphere.
Authorship in movies has never been in contradiction with collaboration.
On the contrary, it’s no surprise that actors, cinematographers, and
other participants are almost always at their best and most distinctive
when they work with great directors—because great directors’ artistic
sensibilities are strong enough to expand to the scope of their
collaborators’ own extremes, and free enough to help those collaborators
tap into them. (Robert Pattinson’s extraordinary performance in “Good Time” is another prime example.)